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Ch.8-Schism

"You have to pick something."

Alec's eyes remained closed as he leaned against the wall. "No."

I sighed, praying for patience. "Seriously. We're here, and they're waiting, and you have to get something."

"I don't have to."

Honestly. "I'll just take two bowls of vanilla ice cream," I told the person at the cash register. They went about preparing it.

"I could be lactose intolerant."

I rolled my eyes. "Then I can't wait to watch you suffer."

He loped off to find a table, and I stuck my tongue out at his back. Jeez. The boy couldn't even get excited about ice cream?

Of course, if I had it my way I wouldn't even be in this situation.

"You two need to bond," my grandfather had said. "Find some common ground. Learn from each other. Get along."

Some things in life were impossible. But he couldn't seem to understand that. Humans sprouting wings and flying while spitting fire, breeding a pack of unicorns, and Alec and I getting along. I just couldn't see it happening. Not now, and not in the foreseeable future.

"Thank you," I said to the cashier, taking both bowls of ice cream and surveying the scene for Alec. I saw him through the window, having chosen an outside seat. His head was buried in his arms and I felt a twinge of worry, but I forced it out of me. It didn't have to mean anything.

I pushed through the doors and walked to the table, setting both bowls down. He jerked up, the ever-present scowl on his face. I expected some sort of gratitude, seeing as I drove him here and paid for his meal and everything, but he just grabbed his spoon and shoved a scoop of ice cream in his mouth.

"You could say thank you," I pointed out.

He shrugged. "Yeah, I could."

"But you won't, will you?"

"Nope." He swallowed another mouthful. "This is good."

"Ice cream is always good."

"Hm."

I released another suffering sigh, leaning back against the wall of the restaurant. The place my grandfather suggested wasn't immediately in Heart, but outside of it, by some lake. There was a boardwalk with lights set up and a stage with abandoned instruments, so I guessed there would be live music sometime later tonight. Fun. And I doubted Alec would care to stay.

Good thing I had the keys.

We finished our ice cream in silence. With my monster appetite and unsightly consumption speeds, I was done way before him. So I just sat back and watched, surveyed, stared. There was something so enigmatic with the way Alec did everything. The way he shoved his spoon into the vanilla glob of ice cream, the way he slid it into his mouth. As weird as it sounded, all his actions seemed to imply something else, give way to a hidden something.

Or maybe I was just grasping for straws that really weren't there.

"What's it like?" I blurted out. His eyes snapped up to mine, sharp and cold as ice.

"What's what like?" he questioned.

"Having, um-BPD-what's it like?"

He started chopping up his ice cream into little blobs in the bowl with his spoon. "I don't know how you want me to answer that question."

"However you want to answer it."

I watched his ice cream become a soupy mess. It didn't look like he planned on finishing it off. "I don't know. I've lived with it for most of my life. It's just there."

"Like seeing and hearing," I commented. "For you. It's just normal."

His eyes bore into mine, eyebrows raised, features scrunched together in wonder. "Yeah," he murmured. "Normal."

I smiled. "You know what's happening right now?"

"Hm?"

"We're getting along."

A real smile quirked his lips. It wasn't anything full-on, but it was a taste. And I could only imagine how he would look if he actually grinned; dimples, his eyes would crinkle, the blues of his irises would be warm and sparkly instead of callous and cold.

Stop it, I scolded myself. But really. What was the harm in thinking it?

"I guess we are," he agreed. "How unusual."

"Indeed." I ran my fingers through my hair. "Since we're so weirdly getting along, can I ask something?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "Not like I can stop you."

"How did you do it?"

He sighed. "You're going to have to be more specific with these questions."

"I would never have been able to tell if my grandfather hadn't told me," I clarified. "You hide it well."

He abandoned the gloppy chunks of ice cream and sat back in the chair, gazing out at the empty stage. "It's not that I try to hide it," he began after some time. "It can be pretty hard hiding the fact that your personality can change from one extreme to the other in ten seconds flat. I just started-coping. Going through life is hard enough. I knew how bad it could be, and I didn't ever want to go back there. So the way I saw it, I didn't really have a choice."

I was amazed. We'd never talked for such a lengthy amount of time and not taken a jab at each other. I kind of liked it. "You still have anger issues."

He smirked. "Do I?"

I couldn't help the playful smile that curled my lips. "Just a bit," I teased. "Sometimes you can be rather volatile."

One eyebrow shot up. "Volatile?"

"And hostile."

"And hostile? My God, I've just got it all."

The laugh bubbled up and out before I could stop it. I had the irrational urge to clamp a hand over my mouth, like laughing in front of Alec or because of something he said was forbidden. It certainly seemed like it should be, but then I remembered that would just be foolish.

A person is a person is a person.

"So you go to Heart High School?" I asked. He nodded. "What are you friends like?"

He snorted. "Try friend. I can't ever imagine why, but people don't seem to want to maintain relationships with someone mentally unstable. Completely baffles my mind."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, ignoring the sarcasm, who's your friend?"

He pursed his lips. "Why are you prying into my life?"

"It's not prying," I assured him. "It's called making conversation. Polite conversation. You should try it someday."

Another almost-real smile. "Angel Holtz."

"You have a friend named Angel?"

"Yep."

"That's awesome."

"He is pretty cool."

"Can I meet him someday?"

He seemed taken aback by my question. "Um-I don't-I mean if you want to," he fumbled for the words. I'd never heard him quite so caught off guard, and it may have been twisted but I found I liked that, too. "He's a bit rough."

I cocked my head. "Yeah, well, so are you and I'm handling things just fine."

"One day then," he murmured. "Perhaps."

And somehow, I knew perhaps was the best I would get.

I offered to get us both some drinks and promptly stood to retrieve them. I found when I was in the same vicinity as Alec for too long it started to feel suffocating. And the scary part was that it wasn't exactly uncomfortable. Sometimes it was quite the opposite. I didn't understand it. Thus was the natural reaction to run away, I guessed.

I was standing at the counter, waiting for the sodas, when I casually glanced outside and saw a group of kids standing around our table. I recognized Heather immediately-I could just tell it was her by her wild hand exaggerations-and I wondered if maybe they were friends of Alec's. But when I looked towards him, and saw the scowl on his features, a few red flags went up.

Uh-oh.

Unable to hear what was happening, all I could do was bear witness. Clearly whatever Heather and her entourage was saying, it wasn't good. I stared hard at Alec, watching for the signs I knew would come. His fists clenched, his veins bulged. He became taut, jaw clenched, eyes tight.

Not good.

"Your drinks, miss," the cashier stated. I grabbed both and rushed out with a breezy thank-you. I nearly toppled over a toddler on my way to the door but I had more important things to worry about. Like keeping Alec from exploding, because I was pretty sure he really would break Heather's arm if given the chance.

"Here," I said to Alec, setting his cup down in front of him. Heather jerked around to me, mouth falling open in surprise.

"Lilia?" she gasped. "What are you doing here?"

I forced a smile. "I'm out to eat with Alec," I told her. "Hi Anthony."

Her boyfriend nodded from where he was in an animated conversation with another one of his band mates. None of them seemed too focused on what was happening. Nobody but Heather.

I took a sip of my coke and continued staring at her, feeling Alec's eyes on me, not sure what I was supposed to do or say.

"So what are you doing out with him?" she questioned. For some reason, I didn't like the way she omitted his name. Didn't like the way she emphasized the word "him" like it was something incorrigible and dirty.

"Eating," I repeated. "Is that wrong?"

"Of course not!" she cried cheerily, but her smile seemed stretched. False. Like when you elongate a rubber band and you can tell any moment it's going to snap. "How do you know Alec?"

"He lives with me and my grandfather," I told her.

"Oh." She folded her arms across her chest. "Isn't it hard?"

I saw Alec tense once again in my peripherals. Heather's words were rubbing me the wrong way. And I knew they shouldn't have, but there was something I so disliked about people talking others down. Assuming prematurely they were nothing. And I was more than certain it stemmed from a lifetime of having that done to me. "Is what hard, Heather?"

"You know-living with him," she whispered, like the boy in question wasn't sitting two feet away. I didn't know if she realized how rude she was being, or was doing it just to be mean, but either way I wasn't impressed. People never ceased to disappoint me.

"I'm sure it's just like living with anybody else," I assured her with a forced smile.

"Don't you know?" she continued.

I sighed. "Know what?"

"He's sick."

That might have been what made the taut band inside of me snap. Made me fall off that point of steadily-maintained control. Because, God, did some people just not hear what came out of their mouths? It was ridiculous sometimes. "I'm sorry, does he have the flu?"

Heather's brows furrowed. "What? No . . ."

"A cold? Strep Throat?"

"I don't think so . . ."

"Then how is he sick?" I demanded, harsher than intended. But I couldn't help it. I was seeing too much of my situation in Alec's and it was sickening. Nobody was ever around to defend me.

But I was around to defend him, and wasn't that something?

"Is it because he's wired just a bit differently than us?" I questioned, taking a step toward her. I'd gained the attention of the rest of her crew as well. "Or maybe because his temper takes a bit less than normal to be riled up?"

"Lily, I'm sorry," she tried to apologize, but I just shook my head.

Sore spot. She had hit a sore spot.

I plopped down in the chair, clutching my drink tightly.

"Never mind," I muttered. "Sorry to go off like that." My words were hollow. I wasn't sorry at all.

"Don't worry about it," she mumbled, face dazed and confused. She opened her mouth to say something else, but decided against it and walked away. I focused on deep breaths, in and out, in and out. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

"It helps when you're feeling cornered or overwhelmed," one therapist had told me. He had been zero help, save for that tidbit of info.

"Lily."

I jumped, embarrassingly having forgotten Alec was in the vicinity. His face was blank, but not the cold kind of blank. It was simply uncomprehending of the situation, what had just played out. To be honest, I wasn't completely sure what had happened myself. "Yeah?"

"What was that?"

I pinched the straw of my cup stubbornly. "What was what?"

"That. What just happened."

"Nothing," I mumbled. "It was nothing. I was just being stupid and impulsive again."

He didn't say anything, and neither did I.

We sat in silence like that for a good long while, until I heard music drift up from the stage. I closed my eyes and let the croon of the guitar soothe my senses, the dull rhythm of the drums pound in time with my heart. Music was hypnotic. Addicting. Better than any drug out there.

I popped my eyes open, then, an idea having formed in my head. "Have you ever tried music?"

His head whipped around to me. "What?"

"Music. As an outlet. It's super effective, trust me."

He shook his head. "Never."

"You should. You seem like a hard rock kind of guy."

"I'll keep that in mind."

I rolled my eyes and stood suddenly, needing an escape from that area. There was too much emotional congestion around it. "Come down and dance with me."

He laughed out-right, like I had just proposed we go and kidnap the president.

"What?" I demanded. "What's so funny?"

"I don't dance," he deadpanned.

"So?"

"So, it's a miracle we haven't bitten each other's heads off yet. Don't push your luck."

"I'm not pushing my luck. I'm trying to find better ways for you to vent than harsh words and brutality."

"I am not brutal."

"Beg to differ."

"Ignored."

"Come on," I insisted, voice bordering on whiny. "Just once? You might like it."

"I might hate it."

"Or like it," I reiterated. "You'll never know."

There was something intermingling with his gaze when he looked at me, something I couldn't identify. But it was there, and clear, and it drove me crazy not being able to know just what it was. "If I do this you don't bug me for a week."

I grinned. "Done."

"God help me," he muttered under his breath, and let me lead him down to the impromptu dance floor.

Despite agreeing to dance, he didn't do anything more spectacular than stand there. All while I looked like an absolute idiot "cutting loose", and "breaking it down". It was pretty crowded too, so about half-way into it I abandoned my button-up and continued in jeans and a camisole. A light sheen of sweat coated my skin, glimmering in the dangling lights as the sky darkened. It was clearly a happening place, and though Alec may have wanted to shove his face into a brick wall, I was having fun.

Real fun. Lots of fun.

A woman came on to sing and I recognized the first few strums of "Stranded" by Heart play out. I had heard the song long ago, from beneath the closed door of my father's study. A lot of their stuff, actually, and I fell in love with it.

I grinned widely, reeling Alec into me, drunk off the happiness and the ambience and the pretty dangling lights. High off the laughter rising around me, from the energy the performers exuded, and the sweat I could feel beading my forehead as the skin crinkled with my own merriment.

"Just one last song," I requested. Alec grumbled to himself but stayed. He had absolutely no idea what to do with his hands. I chuckled.

"Haven't you ever danced before?" I asked him.

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Sorry if learning ballroom wasn't at the top of my To-Do list."

"No bitterness," I reprimanded. "We've made it this far and I'm not questioning how. Here," I said, taking his hand and settling it on my hip. "It goes there."

His face betrayed his discomfort, and I smiled sadistically at forcing him out of his comfort zone. Good. This was good.

I took his other hand in mine and laid my free one on his shoulder. There was about five inches of space between us. The expanse between our faces was greater, simply because I had to crane my neck to see him. I liked this. A lot. Him not being so vindictive or cynical, going with the flow and being teasing but not hurtfully so.

I liked being able to dance, to teeter with him clumsily on the dance floor and not feel weighed down by the burdens of a sucky home-life or perfect sister.

I liked being able to forget everything.

I liked just being me.

"There are a number of things I should be doing right now," he spoke. "And this is certainly not one of them."

"Oh, boohoo," I taunted. "You can cry later."

He stared at me flatly. "I was not crying."

"Whatever." I leveled my gaze with his chest, feeling how quickly and easily he was sinking into the choreography. "You're a good dancer."

"Don't even."

"What?" I returned my gaze to his. "Is it so bad to be good at something?"

His face tightened again, like he was in physical pain. Without thinking I ran my hand over his shoulder and up his neck, running my thumb over the indent in his chin. "Don't do that," I frowned. "You'll get early wrinkles."

His hand tightened around mine, and that brought me awareness of my actions. I quickly returned my hand to his shoulder, feeling my cheeks heat up. "Wrinkles are the last thing I'm worried about," he muttered.

I stared at his chest again. I found it easier, in that moment, not to make direct eye contact. It was doing funny things to my insides. "What was Heather saying to you earlier?"

"It's not important." He brushed it off so easily.

Like it might have happened before.

I stopped dancing, right in the middle of the swaying bodies. He stopped as well and looked down at me. For somebody who always looked so cold, who always acted so cold, he was incredibly warm.

"It's happened before," I whispered. "Don't tell me it hasn't."

He released a long breath and pulled away. "We should get back, it's dark."

I chased him through the throngs of dancers. "Alec . . . Alec, wait!" I grabbed his arm, spinning him around. "Will you just wait a second?"

His nostrils flared. "Remember what I said before? About asking questions you don't want to know the answers to?"

I crossed my arms tightly over my chest. "I disregarded the rule from the beginning."

"You shouldn't have." He wrenched out of my grip and kept going. "You still don't know nearly as much about me as you think you do."

"Then why don't you tell me?" I cried. "Why don't you fucking tell me the mysteriousness of Alec Grey? Or, wait, you're scared, aren't you? Fucking scared I'll hate you and reject you just like everybody else?"

He whirled on me, eyes narrowed and dangerously dark.

And you know what?

I just wasn't scared.

"You don't scare me," I hissed.

"I should." He grabbed my upper arms tightly. "I should scare you. I should scare the absolute shit out of you and you should hate me and never want to be seen around me. But you do. And I don't understand it."

"Do you have to understand it?"

"Yes!" He exclaimed. "I've never understood anything my whole entire life and just once I'd like to understand something. Whatever this is. I don't understand you, Lilia, and it's driving me completely fucking mad!"

I blinked, his words stealing any potential words from my mouth. He was angry because . . . He didn't understand me?

"I'll be in the car," he grumbled, storming off. I sighed. I knew the good relations couldn't last, but I didn't know it could go from decent to shit in ten seconds.

"As if I'm the one that needs to be understood," I muttered, sulking off after him. And then it kind of hit me.

Maybe I was.

When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was never sure of who I saw anymore. I wasn't certain if I ever knew who I was looking at. A piece of discarded trash, thrown out by my parents? That's all I was ever molded to be. But I wanted something more. I believed I was something more.

But what?

And maybe that was the root of this deep schism within me. Broken and shattered, pieces scattered everywhere. A big black hole within me. Maybe this unhappiness, the abrupt bouts of depression, the loss of direction . . .

Maybe it was all because I had no idea who I was.

And before I could do anything else, I needed to understand me first.